Zymotic diseases : their correlation and causation / By A. Wolff.

  • Wolff, Abraham, 1819-1892.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Zymotic diseases : their correlation and causation / By A. Wolff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    any Jewish dwelling, the stored water in three houses on each side of the dwelling where the death has occurred, shall he poured away. Another law is that all the passages and staircases along which a dead body has been carried, shall immediately undergo a thorough cleansing and purification. We see therefore that the sanitary legislation of the present day was foreshadowed at a very remote period, and that the importance of studying the laws that regulate the diffusion of zymotic disease was recognised long before Dr. Williams expressed in words the great truth that “ contagion is as im- portant an element in medicine as gravity in mechanics, or electricity in chemistry ” Daily observation and universal experience having proved beyond a doubt that certain forms of disease are communicated to healthy individuals by contact with those affected by such disease, great efforts have been made to discover the exact manner in which this contagion acts, and to detect the form that the contagium assumes. In a preceding page of this section the various hypotheses that have been brought forward have been examined, and an opinion has been ventured as to how far they are borne out by evidence. Great importance has been attached to contagion, as evidence of the specificity of each form of zymo- tic disease, as though the principle of contagion were a special quality peculiarly appertaining to